Dear Peck:

“It’s raining here tonight. The rain’s falling in muffled taps against the side of my house. And it’s falling in a tinny ping on my bedroom window. The two sounds blend like voices chanting. No words, but a lot of meaning still. I think I’m supposed to hear something like an answer to the question I’m asking, the question I always ask. Like there’s some wisdom in the harmony of those misty voices”-

– I re-read and studied your posts (not the replies), and I would like to suggest what I see as some wisdom in the harmony of what you shared here:

The key sentences (not necessarily in order) in your shares are these:

“I went mostly unnoticed at 18 or 25 or 30… I feel invisible, and I so want to be seen. And maybe if the woman who loves me doesn’t see me anymore, or perhaps never did see me as I hoped to be seen, then  I have to let go of the hope that anyone ever will.. I’m here on the internet because I feel like I can’t talk to her about how I really feel, because that may kill any attraction she may still have for me… That shook my confidence, in myself and maybe in us.. or in the hope I had that we’d be different than most couples. Seems like a pretty childish hope now”.

In other words, this relationship of twenty years has been dying for a long time and currently, it is pretty dead.

“when I felt a loss, or several losses, I talked about it, which turns out to have been bad form. I should stoically accepted the loss, and maybe she would have seen that as attractive, or at least not as unattractive as me asking for what I  needed”.

The relationship is dead and she is the one of the two of you that killed it through indifference. She doesn’t care to see you anymore, doesn’t care to hear you anymore. Once again, like so often before in your life, you are invisible and mute, I suppose. You are unseen and unheard within your now 20 year relationship.

“Somewhere someone told me that being vulnerable was a good thing. Maybe I don’t do vulnerable right… I’m attracted to her, though, and I tell her and show her often.. I do love her”…”I’m angry if she could (reciprocate), but doesn’t see the need”- she doesn’t see the need. She is indifferent to you.

“I do love her, and I believe she loves me”- I don’t think she loves you. Not anymore.

The sex part, the decline, that is a side issue. If it was the main issue, there are lots of books on the matter of sex in later  life, and there are sex therapists, plenty of resources to help.

But you can’t help, or cure indifference.

anita